Bigotry is common. When people use these words it may just be a matter of them telling you who they are. In some ways it's good that they've let you know.

When aimed at someone as purposeful insult and contempt it is another issue in my opinion. I never forgave my uncle for the incident I mentioned. In that case it was not so much what he said, but how he said it.

The magic of magic words is not just the word, but how it is used.

You mention the Q word. As a child I learned the word as meaning, out of the ordinary, peculiar or strange. I don't know when its dominant use became a slur aimed at homosexuals. Something new during my lifetime or something I was just unaware of in a time of innocence. One of a number of words ruined by how it became used.

Was the N word (origin) ever benign like that?